Identifying and explaining the activities of turnaround leadership at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

This paper is aimed at identifying the activities and processes of fast change in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad based on the concept of turnaround leadership. Although many overseas researches has been conducted on this concept from 2005 and given this fact that it has penetrated into the educational system literature in the last decade, by no domestic study has been explained and investigated so far. The current study is to identify the activities of turnaround leadership through conducting deep interviews with the managers of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in order to provide a better understanding of what the academic leaders do in the process of turnaround leadership. In doing so, after describing the main concepts of turnaround leadership using the qualitative interviews, its activities were extracted by adopting content analysis approach. Obtained results indicated that turnaround leadership is comprised of 33 different activities in order to create a culture supporting the quality of education and research and to encounter with the performance challenges of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. These activities can explain this type of leadership for creating fast and timely changes in line with the macro strategies of Iran's higher education system.

Leadership, Turnaround, Higher education system